So long, Adam Dunn

Fivethirtyeight has a nice write-up of Dunn’s career. Part of me wonders if Adam Dunn’s career — a pretty good one at times, 2011 excepted — is about as good as the Rob Deer/Russell Branyan type could expect. Dunn had some speed, too, earlier in his career with Cincinnati.

Looking at his statistics, I can’t help but marvel at somebody who was so terrible at making contact being so valuable a baseball player. Not to mention that he never had a positive dWAR in his entire career.

I wonder if, now that he’s retired, he’ll shed some light on why his career took a huge nose dive in 2011. Even the “rebound” he’s enjoyed in the past few years has hardly been earth shattering. 2012, though… how do you almost slug .500 when you’re hitting just above the Mendoza line?!

Adam Dunn will need to buy a ticket to get into the Hall of Fame, and I’m totally okay with that. I don’t want to fetishize batting average, but if your career average is .237, I’m not even sure if you make it into the Hall of Very Good. Maybe the Hall of Statistical Oddities?